It's pumpkin spice latte season, right? Our staff really doesn't know any better... We taste tested SIX pumpkin spice lattes and tried to guess where they're from! Watch most of us realize that we're not the biggest fans of the popular fall drink. How do you feel about your local PSL?
By Nisha Gill, Contributor
Tucked away between bakeries and boutiques in Hamilton’s downtown core, Factory Media Centre (228 James St. North) is somewhat isolated from the hustle and bustle. Housed within the artist-run centre, Hamilton-native Natalie Hunter merges photography, video projection and sculpture to create a space to reflect on questions questions of memory, home, time and light.
A collection of photo-based works created over the last four years, “sensations of breathing at the sound of light” is different Hunter’s typical pieces. The artist’s work has been exhibited across Canada and the United States, almost always in well-lit, neutral-coloured spaces, contrary to the conditions that are present in the Factory Media Centre.
“Factory Media’s space is quite cinematic, and it’s a challenging space because it doesn’t have accurate lighting like most white cube gallery spaces. Working with [Factory Media Centre] coordinator Kristina Durka, we decided to work with the darkness of the space and curate works that create light, in addition to reacting with its kinetic qualities,” Hunter explained.
When viewers enter the Factory Media Centre, it is immediately apparent that the space is as much a part of Hunter’s exhibition as are her works. The visible cables and wires, the naturally limited and cinematic lighting and the openness of the space all compliment Hunter’s work. This interaction between the space and the work allows for the viewer to reflect on the work and the influence of memory and home, furthering the incredibly unique and immersive experience that comes with viewing it.
“Allowing a photograph to become a physical encounter rather than a picture on a screen or in a frame. And I think “Sensations of breathing at the sound of light” really questions areas between screen space and physical space, and how they influence memory, the senses, and perceptions of time in the present moment. Stillness and motion can be experienced at the same time,” said Hunter.
Hunter’s pieces themselves are created using a combination of film, colour filters and lights that allow a moment in time to be captured not only as a photograph, but as something physical that interacts with the space around it.
“I think my work is different in terms of my consideration of materiality in image making and hybrid forms of sculpture and photography. Allowing a photograph to become a physical encounter rather than a picture on a screen or in a frame. And I think ‘sensations of breathing at the sound of light’ really questions areas between screen space and physical space, and how they influence memory, the senses, and perceptions of time in the present moment,” said Hunter.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3IPsBtHZtJ/
Hunter described the exhibition as a conversation between her and Durka, but also as a space for conversation between herself and the viewers of her exhibition.
“An artist’s job is to provide the conditions for an experience so that a dialogue or conversation can exist between artist and viewer. A conversation that a viewer may draw meaning from or pose further questions, perhaps not immediately, but eventually, through the work. I hope that a viewer is drawn into the work for its visceral and emotive qualities, but keeps them there long enough to contemplate the nature of time, memory, and our relationships to the spaces we create for ourselves,” said Hunter.
“Sensations of breathing at the sound of light” interacts with the space it is housed in to immerse the viewer in the works and encourage them to reflect on important questions about the nature and perceptions of the time, as well as the spaces that we interact with.
The closing reception for “Sensations of breathing at the sound of light” will be on Friday, October 4, 2019 at the Factory Media Centre (228 James St. North) from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Hunter will be in attendance.
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By: Andrew Mrozowski
Stop. Take a second and look up from this article. You’ll most likely see everyone around you on some form of technology, be it on their phones, tablets or computers. We now live in a world where we are so heavily dependent on technology. According to Yvonne Lu, people should be more conscious about how technology affects their identity.
Originally starting off her undergraduate career in commerce, Lu realized her passion laid in a different faculty. Lu began working in marketing and communications but felt like something was missing. She decided to take on a double major between multimedia and theatre and film.
Now in her final year at McMaster, Lu decided to combine her two disciplines into one overall thesis, taking the form of an interactive multimedia installation and a physical performance called interFACE, as part of the School of the Arts Honours Performance Series.
The concept for interFACE came to Lu over this past summer when she was employed by a music video company to be their social media coordinator. Although typically not very active on social media in her own life, Lu found herself getting jealous from the various platforms that she managed as there was an overall feeling that everyone was doing better than her.
“Although there definitely were positive and negative experiences, always being on social media and seeing that people younger than me were doing cooler things than I was, working with huge producers, big companies and getting more responsibility than I was… a lot of the times I felt jealous. It’s why I felt I was a step back, I understood why others were successful and a lot of it was trying to catch up with people,” explained Lu.
interFACE examines how young women interact with technology and how this oversaturation impacts their identity as they grow up. Stemming from a vignette of experiences, the multi-disciplinary art experience allows attendees to delve into the development of identity to look at similarities and differences between how we portray ourselves online versus in person.
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“The question to consider is whether or not social media and digital technology enables us to do more things, or if it consumes us and we are at the whim of the mass media,” explained Lu.
This form of installation is experimental as it features two parts. Viewers will first embark through an audio-visual capsule, which is an audio-sensory experience that saturates the audience in a world that Lu and her team have designed to convey the importance of why we should pay more attention to our own identities. Next viewers will be seated to enjoy the physical portion which expands on what they have observed in the audio-visual capsule.
“This is not something that you would see in traditional theatre. It’s not a narrative or linear piece. We are creating a visceral experience for both our collaborators and audience. We want them to feel that they are in the belly of the beast,” said Lu.
For the thesis student, what the audience takes away from the experience is the primary objective of this piece.
“There isn’t a specific message I want people to walk away with. It’s live theatre and it’s all about interpretation. For us, that’s kind of what I want audiences to walk away with. Questions of what they felt. It’s an emotional journey rather than a narrative,” said Lu.
Show times for interFACE will run on March 28 at 12:30 and 8 p.m. and on March 29 and March 30 at 12:30 and 7 p.m. at the Black Box Theatre in L.R. Wilson Hall. Admission is free.
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Twenty. That's how many weddings I shot in 2018 as a wedding filmmaker, and that's how many couples I've witnessed embark in the romantic tradition of love through ceremonial spectacle. As Aristotle puts it, love that is "composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
But what stems from this poetic union of two perfect swipes matches? A spiritual bliss? Unconditional passion? A fulfilled soul? Maybe. But there is a definite partner in crime to romantic love we all need to control: ego.
Not the Freudian ego, but that Kanye ego. You see it in films, you hear it in music and you feel your eyes rolling back when your lab partner urges you to believe that they "meet the perfect criteria" for their Friday-night-fling. Or better yet, the heavenly Friday-night-fling "fits all my checkboxes."
This is only the bark of the evergreen ego, which we can define using author Ryan Holiday's definition as an "unhealthy belief in our own importance” found in his book Ego Is the Enemy. This is synonymous with arrogance, vanity and of course, Kanye.
The ego in love inflates our own level of significance, while at the same time projecting ambitious standards for another to meet. With this principle narcissism, we begin to see the clinging relationship of ego with "romantic love" — which we can describe through the wisdom of Alain de Botton as a lifelong passion of unconditional affection, monogamous sex of the deepest expressions, independent of any logical reasoning and relying only on instinctual emotions and feelings.
Take that in — romantic love lives solely on emotion without logic. To the casual reader, these childish thoughts may seem obvious, but reflecting deeper, we begin to see signs within ourselves and our closest circle. We must control this. Let's take a look throughout your life.
Going back to where this all began, childhood is where we first experienced love. Most can associate child affection with a loving authority. Whether we called them our parent, sibling, relative, or neighbour, we needed them. The attachment theory research of John Bowlby throughout the 1900's, followed by Prof. Sue Johnson's couples therapy research today, brings sound evidence for our dependence on others. When we screamed for food, we got it. When we cried to be held, we got it. When we laughed for playtime, we got it. This is a good thing. Relying on others is the fundamental reason our species has survived millennia. The downside is in its longevity and growth through life.
Yes, we need others in life, and yes, our deepest instinct is to seek attachment, as outlined by Prof. Johnson, but the feedback loop of the Ariana Grande-esque "I want it, I got it" is the root that sprouts the dark ego of romance. Getting things as children paves the way for this underlying principle of romantic love: When we want something, we'll find a way to get it.
Which brings us to the next step of the growing ego in love. Found in puberty, high school, college or university, new experiences with decreased micromanagement and guidance. This is when the ego begins to experiment. Our claustrophobic wants begin to explore outside the supervised home and seeks easier ways to be watered. Whether through becoming captain of the volleyball team, taking the alto sax solo in band and most notably, finding a significant other to seek love and affection from.
This is also the point where ego meets romance. Our idea of love at this time is heavily influenced by the media, family and friends, and I'm willing to bet they all follow the blueprint of romantic love defined above. The fairytale love. The princess and prince charming love.
The budding ego spreads its roots and leaves into new terrain, searching for nourishment through this angelic and socially-acceptable soil called romance. This fair ground is for taking, stemming from it the seedling motto of “doing it because you want it” which only leads to the growth of our selfish plant called ego.
This is when our ego blooms the biggest, taking our primal egotistic need for affection and mixing it with the socially-acceptable irrationality of love. It almost becomes Machiavellian in the way it finds love.
Robert Greene, author of The Laws Of Human Nature, highlights a few archetypes of the folly relationship: the victim types that need saving, the saviour types to save victims, the devilish romantics of seduction, the image of perfection that never comes to fruition and the straight-up "they'll worship my ego indefinitely and unconditionally because of who I am" type.
Nowhere near complete, these types in relationships are ever-present. They may not come to mind right away when we think of romance, but when we look deeply at traditional love stories, the Romeos and Juliettes, the Snow Whites and Prince Charmings, there they are. And when we look beside us, there they are.
Is this a bad thing? Aristotle once said that to fix the warped curvature of wood, one must apply pressure in the opposite direction. And I do believe that regulating our growth should be at the forefront of any visionary. But is this subjective idea of "true love" really a disservice to our growing forest of human interaction?
Yes, I do believe this traditional view of love has well overstayed its visit. Especially with our cultural shift towards individuality and independence. And the first step to grow with the grain is understanding and loosening our ego.
For better or for worse, it's our ego trying to keep up with the Kardashians Joneses in love. But they're not you, and only you know what climate is best to grow love. Not Disney, not the latest country ballad and not the many wedding films found online. There are 7.4B definitions of love, and we need to rid our ego of any unexamined soil.
This means stop assuming that relationships are the norm. Stop associating sex with love. Logical thinking can be just as divine as cupid's arrow. You don't need to love everything about someone to love them. Arguments are arguments, and not signs from a higher power. We can't put full responsibility on another to complete ourselves. And above all, it doesn't make you any less of a person to love someone.
Let go the ego to let love grow.
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Firewatch is hands-down one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever encountered. I’d checked it out with zero idea what it would be about and what to expect, but the graphics of the start menu alone was all the convincing I needed to continue on.
Firewatch is categorized under “first person adventure,” and it follows a fire lookout named Henry on his first few days on the job. The story is jump-started by the disappearance of two teenage girls in the forest, and it’s up to the player to deal with the puzzle this leaves to be solved. This is the first game from Campo Santo, a developer founded by the two leads from Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead game series. That alone already says its fair share about the game. The dialogue in the game operates almost the same way as Walking Dead — a character says something, and you, as player, get to choose what to do or say next in response. Except Firewatch takes it a step farther, making for an adventure game that’s startlingly immersive in its take on a first-person perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZX3MgsRb0A
The first-person perspective was chosen primarily to save on the costs that come with having to sync voice actors with their character counterparts, but the decision seems to have ultimately worked out in Firewatch’s favour. Playing as Henry, the game operates in a way that makes it look like you’re seeing through his eyes. When you look down, you see Henry’s hands and feet as if they were your own. The player only catches glimpses of what Henry is supposed to look like, and otherwise, for all intents and purposes, you are Henry, and his character is completely yours to experience the game through. As Henry, the player interacts with fellow lookout Delilah only via walkie-talkies, and while this sounds dull, it’s Henry and Delilah’s interactions that really make the game stand out. It’s one thing for it to look great, but with some of the best dialogue I’ve heard in a game and perfectly cast voice actors, Firewatch sounds great, too. It’s simultaneously funny and poignant, and at times even relatable. The absence of a mental image to match Henry and Delilah’s voice behind the witty banter is a huge plus. This, coupled with the realistic graphics and being able to pick between response choices that range from emotional to dryly hilarious, it’s a game that feels very, very real in all aspects. Importantly so, since Firewatch doesn’t hold back on the tragic backstories, either.
The first ten minutes of the game alone loads up on Henry’s own emotional background. And it’s worth noting that while this is quickly established and explored throughout the game, it does so without being overdramatic. Firewatch maintains its realism through and through, handling its story and its few characters without being too much nor being too little. It comfortably juggles the drama, the clever banter, the unraveling mystery and the action behind the main storyline, and in my book, any game that can pull that off while sticking to its own personal charm is worth playing.
That said, Firewatch’s one flaw, as noted by many players and critics, is its ending. The game builds itself up to be something dark and gritty, and while in some ways, it does reach that point, it only scratches the surface before descending back to what is a criminally anti-climactic ending. It’s not terrible, per se, but it’s the kind of ending that really makes you go: Wait, what? Is that it? Really? And that’s quite unfortunate for a game that never prompts those questions anywhere else.
Firewatch makes for a great experience largely thanks to the environment it immerses the player in — the woods look shockingly realistic no matter which route you take, and the dialogue is brilliant and satisfying to the very last syllable. While the ending leaves much to be desired, it’s a quick little game that’s relaxing and escapist in its own charming right, and for that, it deserves a play.
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As much as I have been obsessed with the artistic potential in video games, there have been very few experiences that felt like they could be recommended to a more general audience in the same way that a great film, novel or album could be. Even the classic contenders for the “Best Games of All Time” are steep time investments that make them a hard sell to a less committed audience.
The most prominent titles this year focused on providing hours and hours of content, or using their multi-million dollar budgets to perpetuate the clumsy additions of “cinematic storytelling.” Yet a small Kickstarter-backed game made by director and composer Toby Fox stands out as not only the clear winner for best game of 2015, it may very well have a shot for one of the greatest, and most important games of the modern era. Regardless of whether or not you have dabbled in the medium before, you have to experience the fantastical and complex world of Undertale.
On the surface, Undertale is a relatively straightforward, five-hour, turn-based role playing game, developed using Game Maker: Studio, a free engine. You assume the control of a nameless child, who has fallen into an underground world of monsters, and must encounter its strange residents, solve puzzles, and explore a variety of different environments in their journey home.
Yet, unlike the traditional role-playing game, Undertale allows the player to complete the entire game without killing a single enemy. Almost every character interaction and plot point is changed heavily depending on whether or not the player has chosen to kill or show mercy: to play as a pacifist, or to kill every single character in the game.
The world within Undertale is whimsical, humorous, and as charming as it is deeply moving. It is reminiscent of some of my own favourite works of fantasy, that blend a humorous cast of characters with just the right amount of dark undertones subtly found throughout the plot. Every monster you encounter, though potentially violent at first, are never purely malicious, and it can be just as addicting to flirt with slime monsters, pet a Great Dog knight, or “unhug” a monster and respect their boundaries. The potential interactions during random encounters and boss battles make the pacifist route much more rewarding than traditional turn-based combat.
Undertale really punishes players in emotional form just as it does in terms of difficulty when one chooses the genocide route, and Fox does so by forcing players to consider the weight of their actions on this fictional world. There is no sense of heroism or justification in the genocide path, the game itself acknowledges that the player is really only doing it because they can. Monsters who would otherwise be the best of friends will desperately try to defend their loved ones against you, and their deaths are gruesome as they are desperate.
While the strong cast of characters, writing, and tight battle-system would make a great title in its own right, Undertale’s commentary on some of the inherent traits of the video game medium is what pushes it to masterpiece status. Undertale acknowledges the absolute power the player has over the game itself, and in the face of that, begs and pleads that he/she shows mercy to its charming characters and world. Yet, while Fox actively encourages the player to follow the path of the pacifist, the world and characters that he created actively acknowledge that the player will eventually choose a genocide run out of some morbid curiosity, some “completionist” impulse or at the very least, watch the violent playthrough on YouTube.
Yes, one of the characters will call out those who choose to watch a genocide run on YouTube. That same character will acknowledge your attempts to reset and undo some of your accidental killings, and many more recognize that certain situations feel “nostalgic” after you decided to reset and play the game again. A genocide run followed by a pacifist playthrough will permanently prevent the player from getting the true, happy ending that typically follows the Pacifist run. The characters themselves will even can even beg the player not to reset the game following its completion, as it would undo the happy ending in their world. There are no true resets, and no true reloads.
A small Kickstarter-backed game made by director and composer Toby Fox stands out as not only the clear winner for best game of 2015, it may very well have a shot for one of the greatest, and most important games of the modern era.
Breaking the fourth wall is not just a novel gimmick in Undertale. It is a critical part of the in-game story, and it is more importantly an open acknowledgement of the absolute power players have over video games themselves. This is a critical part of Undertale’s spirit, and what is arguably the most important aspect of its presentation. The ability to save, load, reset, manipulate files and even share these experiences online is an intrinsic part of the medium, and the game uses these components as a more powerful form of storytelling than any of this year’s cinematic attempts. Undertale is one of a kind, in that the relationship between the player and the game is allowed to go beyond the experiences directly within the game, and its exploration of the relationship that the player can have with the game itself is a radical new world for game developers to explore in future titles.
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By: Mitali Chaudhary
There is no doubt that, in this age of information and technology, the ease with which anyone with a smartphone can immortalize moments through video and photography is one of our most influential achievements.
The now ridiculously effortless step of sharing our content with the entire world is the truly amazing feat, however, as attention can be quickly brought to important social issues, ideas can be sent across the globe, and extremely cute cat videos can be giggled over with friends.
But such forms of media can often do more harm than good. The act of taking and sharing a single photo in an inappropriate context may result in personal privacy issues, given the number of people who can potentially view it and interpret it in different ways.
This is especially relevant in light of a recent video of a woman who missed her ferry in Victoria, British Columbia and had a breakdown at the terminal. A bystander filmed her entire tirade, then posted it on the “Spotted in Victoria” Facebook page. It took off from there, becoming viral and accumulating thousands of likes and shares.
But we can’t forget about the impact this had on the woman. By exposing her moment of stress to the entire world, she was, to some degree, stripped of her privacy. As videos and photos show only specific moments of a person’s behaviour, usually in awkward or unbecoming circumstances, it’s almost impossible to bring their situation into context.
It’s easy to sit behind a keyboard and judge the individual from the minute-long YouTube video than it is to analyze the reasoning behind their display of distress. In this case, her missed ferry could have meant missing a dying loved one, or an important dinner. This lack of context caused her feelings to be further trivialized, by the bystander himself, as the video’s accompanying description read “she had a little temper tantrum,” as if she were a toddler who has them often, and isn’t meant to be taken seriously. Everyone feels flustered in an out-of-control situation. Why mock them by recording and sharing their plight with the whole world?
This is only one among many questions that have risen along with this trend of capturing and sharing images and videos without consent. Where is the line between funny and creepy when it comes to recording someone’s awkward situation? How many views does a video have to get to start infringing on the subject’s privacy? And when is taking a photo taking it too far?
